Shortly after being forced to recall close to half a million pieces of its Vaio laptops in September (See: Sony recalls over 470,000 Vaio laptops over faulty wiring), the ghost of the earlier battery recall is back to haunt Sony once again. The Japanese electronics maker has had to recall, yet again, laptop batteries numbering around 100,000 pieces from all around the world.

Thus far, the recall is set to impact customers who bought laptops or notebook computers from manufacturers HP, Dell and Toshiba, and were supplied with Sony-manufactured batteries that had been produced between October 2004 and June 2005.

The lithium-ion batteries apparently prose a potential fire hazard due on account of overheating.

In 2006, Sony took a huge hit when a recall of thousands of batteries it had supplied to a lengthy list of laptop makers, including Apple (See: Sony to recall 90,000 batteries used in its Vaio notebook computers) 

This time, however, the recall appears to impact a substantially smaller number of computers and companies. Reports suggest that this time around, however, customers of Apple are safe from this recall as none of the batteries were used in Apple laptops. At the time, a number of complaints had been received about batteries overheating and even bursting into flames.

Sony and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced the current battery recall, and suspect that around 35,000 Sony-made laptop batteries have been recalled in the US alone. An additional 65,000 laptop batteries are estimated to have been recalled overseas.

Reoprts quoted information from Sony as syaing that around 19 reports of the batteries in question had overheated. Around 17 complaints involved flame or fire, while 10 are said to have caused some minor property damage. Two users are said to have sustained minor burns from the fires.

Notebooks where the batteries have been used include select systems form HP, Toshiba and Dell. Battery models covered by the recall include HP A0, L0, L1, and GC units.

Dell battery model recalled is the OUO91. Reports suggest that Toshiba most probably does not use battery model numbers, and that users of Toshiba's systems would need to check for more information on the recall.

Some reports suggested that  Acer and Lenovo were also part of the list of manufacturers affected by the recall. Besides around 74,000 Hewlett-Packard computers, and another 14,400 from Toshiba, a small number of laptops made by Dell, Acer and Lenovo are said to be affected.

Sony said that the problem arose on account of poor quality of some battery cells, which in turn arose because of factory changes the company made a number of years ago.

Sony did not anticipate any financial impact of the recall on its earnings. The recall is relatively smaller than the previous four-million batteries that Dell had recalled in 2006, which had cost Sony millions in compensation. Sony had recalled 438,000 of its Vaio laptops last month, again on account of concerns of the battery overheating.